July 18, 2005
More young lawyers quit Bar
Many become in-house counsel for firms or opt for other jobs
By K.C. Vijayan
A GROWING number of young lawyers are turning their hand to other kinds of work after putting in a handful of years practising.
This boy needs an oxygen tank to breathe
550 Microsoft employees to help community
Price not high for no-frills dialysis at private centres
SM Goh's remarks 'very frank'
Chinese standard has not dropped: PM Lee
'Hiring' contest gets students fired up
Attack by crows in Marine Parade
ST's Little Red Dot proves of big use in class
Case File
Bus 925 now plies Kranji farm area
4 purr-fect cats
Quick News
Safra pool reopens
Bio-treasure Isle
School on Sentosa? It's no beach holiday
More young lawyers quit Bar
Happy to be back
Ideals dampened, he opts to run family restaurant
Why teens found Hitler cool
It shouldn't have been allowed
Hip and happening
Let's talk about materialism
Value people above possessions
What's in a pair of old jeans? Plenty
A little retail therapy never hurt anyone
More than 400 have stopped practising and left the Bar over the last four years, figures from the Law Society show. The number of junior lawyers stood at 1,111 at the end of March this year. There were 1,537 in March 2001.
This year alone, 325 had not renewed their practising certificates as at April. In 2001, 280 left the profession.
Those in the business see the drop in the number of young practitioners as a troubling trend, though the number of senior lawyers has grown over the same period, rising from 1,987 in 2001 to 2,379 this year.
But they add that it is to be expected considering the pull factors elsewhere.
Said veteran Amolat Singh: 'They have greater mobility in the market. Litigation work is less lucrative too now in areas like criminal law.'
A 27-year-old lawyer, who quit after working for two years in one of the biggest firms here, said the narrow scope of work prompted her to leave. 'I looked at my older bosses then and decided that was not where I wanted to be in 20 years.'
The woman, who asked not to be named, opted to act as in-house counsel for a multinational corporation. 'In my new job, I got to know what the business world is like. I am given varied tasks, from banking to litigation to even debt collection. I feel I'm adding value to the company through my work now,' she said.
Another lawyer who did not renew his practising certificate this year said the salary paid by the big firm he worked in was low compared to the hours he put in. It did not help, said the 29-year-old, that his contemporaries employed as in-house counsel are paid about the same as he was, without having to slog 12 to 14 hours a day.
'The problem here is that starting salaries are controlled by the few big law firms which dominate the local market like a cartel.'
His suggestion: Open up the market and let foreign law firms operate freely here.
Acknowledging that younger lawyers are 'slipping as a percentage of the profession', Law Society president Philip Jeyaretnam said they are leaving largely because of the other opportunities available.
These pull factors include becoming in-house counsel for firms, joining foreign law firms here and overseas, and opting to go into other areas, like the service industry or the arts.
'There's a challenge for the profession to respond and take better care of young lawyers, not so much from the point of view of pay as from the point of view of career development.
'Young lawyers need to be given a sense of where they're going and how they're going to get there,' he said.
The opening up of other opportunities elsewhere underlines the high value of the Singapore lawyer, he added.
'He is known to be sound in his knowledge of the law, to be a reasonably good communicator and to be very sensible and practical. It makes him very popular among recruiters.'
